But This Time They May Have a Point
Yesterday, I made fun of a Belgian Newspaper that sued Google for linking back to its site. Ars Technica reported on a Google law suit of a different sort. This one involves two sites that allegedly pirated content, then generated more than a million bucks in revenue. To quote the article:
Legal filings show that Google worked with EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com from 2003 to 2005, generating more than $1.1 million in revenue for the sites through the AdSense program. The sites were generally oriented towards facilitating piracy, and site operators Brandon Drury and Luke Sample are now facing legal action for inducing others to infringe copyright. Both sites sold a repackaged BitTorrent client and access to a P2P search system, but the defendants argue that they are not guilty of the charges.
This is interesting because it's very different from yesterday's post. In this case, the plaintiffs may have a point, and it goes back to what I said about there being a fine line between what's OK and what's not on the Internet.
In my EContent story on RSS Rights and Wrongs, published in September, I addressed this very issue and it is not always clear what's not stealing, but in cases like this (if the facts in this case are as stated in the article), then it's crystal clear when it is.
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